Thetsarist government steadily continues its “work” to falsify the
Duma. Warning the credulous Russian public not to be carried away by
constitutionalism, we wrote, even before these falsifications began (see
Proletary, No. 5, September 30,1906), that a new coup d’état was in
preparation, namely, that the electoral law of December 11, 1905, was to be
amended before the elections to the Second Duma. At that time we wrote:
“Nor is there any doubt that the government is carefully studying”
the question “whether the old electoral law should remain in
force”.[1]

Yes,the tsar’s government has been studying this question and, perhaps, has
already even completed its study. It has preferred to amend the electoral law by
means of Senate interpretations.[3]
Now it is taking further steps in the direction of restricting freedom
of agitation (if freedom in Russia can be further restricted)
and faking the elections. The other day an order was
promulgated prohibiting the issue of election forms to unregistered
parties.[4]
Newspapers are being more and more summarily
suppressed. Arrests are becoming more and more frequent. Premises are being
raided and searched with the most transparent object of obtaining the names of
electors and influential voters, in order to “remove” them. In
short, the election campaign is in full swing, as the witticism of Russian
citizens puts it.

Howfar the government will go with its military-court methods of falsifying the
Duma, no one can tell. Why not arrest the electors both on election day and
after the elections?
The law—that stupid word still has currency in
Russia!—speaks of the immunity of members of the Duma, but there is not a
word in it about the immunity of electors. Our press pointed this out even
during the elections to the First Duma. The Black-Hundred tsarist gang
thought that “Witte missed his chance” on that occasion; hut in
fact the government was still too weak after the December uprising to go on
and capture the revolution’s next line of defence. Now the
counter-revolution has gathered strength, and is doing the right thing, from
its point of view, in breaking the constitution (which only naive Cadets
could believe in). The reactionaries are not liberal
Balalaikins.[5]
They are men of action. They see, and know from experience, that the
tiniest bit of freedom in Russia inevitably leads to an upsurge of the
revolution. They are therefore compelled to go farther and
farther, to do more and more violence to the October Constitution, to
tighten still further the political safety valve that once was half open.

Ittakes the infinite obtuseness of a Russian Cadet, or of a non-party
progressive intellectual, to cry out, on that account, about the government’s
folly and urge it to return to the path of constitutionalism. The government
cannot act otherwise in protecting the tsarist regime and landlordism
from the concealed, subdued, but unquelled pressure from be low. And we say to
the government: All right, put your dampers on, tighten the half-opened
valves. While they were somewhat open the fresh draught increased the heat in
the boiler. When you close the valves there may be an explosion of the very kind
we most desire. Our business is to make the utmost use among the masses of
Stolypin’s splendid propaganda, of his splendid explanations of the
“nature of the constitution”.

Buthere we see the deep gulf that separates the tactics of the
liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie from the tactics of the socialist
proletariat. The Social-Democrats advocate a struggle, and explain to the people
with the aid of a thousand and one lessons from history that a struggle is
inevitable; they are preparing for it and retaliate to the intensification of
reaction with intensified revolutionary agitation. The liberals cannot advocate
a struggle, because they are afraid of it. They respond to the intensification
of reaction
by whining about a constitution, thus corrupting people’s minds, and by
intensified opportunism. The methods of the liberals were aptly and graphically
hit off by the Trudovik Sedelnikov at a meeting on May 9 in the Panina
Palace. When a liberal is abused, he says: Thank God they didn’t beat me. When
he is beaten, he thanks God they didn’t kill him. When he is killed, he will
thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay.

WhenStolypin’s Black-Hundred gang cried out against the Cadets and launched a
campaign against their revolutionary tendencies, the Cadets began to howl:
“It is not true, we are not revolutionaries, we are respectable people!
Down with the Vyborg Manifesto, down with blocs with the Lefts, down with the
slogan of ’a Duma with full power’ advocated by the most Right-wing of the Right
Social-Democrats, Plekhanov; down with pernicious revolutionary illusions! We
are going into the Duma to legislate.” When the Black-Hundred gang announced
that the Cadets, as an unregistered party, would not be issued election forms,
the Cadets cried out:
“That puts a different complexion on the question of agreements!” (See the
leading article in Rech, December 13). That increases the importance
of the only registered party of the opposition, the Party of Peaceful
Renovation”. “When entering into agreements this must be taken into
consideration!” And when the Cadet elector who has managed to creep into the
Peaceful Renovation list is hauled off to the police station—the Cadets
will thank God that we have not been completely deprived of the
constitution. Our knights of the law will then say: The only absolutely safe
party is that of the Octobrists; and have we not always said that we take our
stand on the Manifesto of October 17?

Whatdo the Menshevik comrades think about this? Should we not hasten to call a
new Party conference and sanction agreements with the Peaceful Renovators and,
perhaps, even with the Octobrists? After all, they, too, want
“semi-liberty”, as the extremely embarrassed Plekhanov argues today
(December 14) in the newspaper of the ex-Social Democrats!

Itis not by accident that the question of the Peaceful Renovators has cropped
up among the Cadets. It had been raised before, prior to the order concerning
the issue of
election forms. Even the Left Cadets on Tovarishch (the “almost
socialists”, as some jesters call them) in their issue of December 5
included the Peaceful Renovators among the
progressive parties, counting six progressive parties in all
(the Cadets, the Social-Democrats, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Popular
Socialists, the Party of Democratic Reforms and the Party of Peaceful
Renovation). In the same issue of Tovarishch the ex-Social-Democrats
poured their wrath on the poster about the three main parties published
as a supplement to Proletary, No.
8.[2]
It is “political dishonesty”, cried Plekhanovs friends—b
relegate Heyden to the Black Hundreds!

Weare very glad that we have compelled the renegade Social-Democrats to defend
this former Octobrist, who after the dissolution of the Duma, protested against
the Vyborg Manifesto and negotiated with Stolypin about the Cabinet.

Butyou gentlemen, collaborators of Plekhanov, should have been more adroit in
your defence of him! It is common knowledge that in the first elections the
Octobrists (including Heyden and Shipov) formed a bloc with the Black
Hundreds. You are prepared to forget this because the party has changed its name?
And yet on that very page (4) of Tovarishch, December 5, we read that
there is a trend in the Union of October Seventeenth which is in favour of an
agreement with the Party of Peaceful Renovation, and that this trend even
predominates in the St. Petersburg branch of the Union. And a little lower down
we read that “the Central Board of the United Russian People”
sanctions blocs with the Octobrists, and for that reason Tovarishch
refuses to recognise the Octobrists as constitutionalists.

Isn’tthat fine? We refuse to call the Octobrists constitutionalists because
the Black Hundreds sanction blocs with them. But we call the Peaceful Renovators
progressives, despite the fact that the Octobrists sanction blocs with them.

Theintellectualist radicals’. defence of the Peaceful Renovators, the turn
taken by the central organ of the Cadet Party towards peaceful renovation
immediately after the
order on election forms was issued, are typical examples of liberal tactics. If
the government takes one step to the right, we take two steps to the right! Lo
and behold —again we are legal and peaceful, tactful and loyal; we shall
manage without election forms, we are always ready to adapt our selves in
conformity with infamy![6]

Theliberal bourgeoisie think that this is realist politics. They are proud of
this grovelling realism (to use the admirable expression of a certain
Social-Democrat), they consider it the height of political tact and wise
diplomatic tactics. In actual fact, these are not only the most stupid and
treacherous, but the most sterile tactics imaginable; it was by pursuing these
tactics that the German Cadets—from the Frankfort windbags to Bismarck’s
bootlicking national liberals[7]—for
more than half a century
after the bourgeois revolution consolidated the state power in the hands of the
Junkers (the Black-Hundred landlords, the Dorrers, Bulatsels and
Purishkeviches—to name their Russian counterparts) and in the hands of
“military despotism embellished with parliamentary
forms”.[8]

Itis time our Mensheviks, who are so enamoured of this policy of the Cadets and
are imitating it, understood that the only realist politics, realist in the good
and not vulgar sense of the word, are the politics of revolutionary Marxism. We
must retaliate to the tricks and manoeuvres of the reactionaries not by
adapting ourselves to the Right, but by intensifying and spreading our
revolutionary propaganda among the proletarian masses, by developing the spirit
of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary class organisations. In this
way, and only in this way, will you strengthen the power of the only fighters
against reaction, in spite of all the latter’s tricks and
manoeuvres. Retaliating to the Black-Hundred tricks of the government by
adapting your tactics to the Right you break up and weaken the only force that
is capable of fighting, the force of the revolutionary classes, you obscure
their revolutionary consciousness with the tinsel of tricky political
“manoeuvres”.

Atfirst the Mensheviks were opposed to agreements with the Cadets. Martov
condemned agreements. Y. Larin indignantly rejected them. Even
Nich. I—sky disapproved of them. Influenced by the Senate interpretations
(by our reactionary
senates in Geneva and in St. Petersburg) Martov & Co. adapted
themselves to the Right. They are in favour of blocs with the Cadets, but
not with any one further to the Right than the Cadets—heaven forbid!
With the “opposition democratic parties” (the resolution of I
Lie All-Russian Conference, proposed by the Central Committee and adopted
by 18 votes to 14), but no further to the Right!

Butnow the Cadets are turning to the Peaceful Renovators. And are you,
Menshevik comrades, going to do the same? In answer to the Senate
interpretations—blocs with the Cadets; in answer to the withdrawal of
election forms—blocs with the Peaceful Renovators? What will your answer
be when they start arresting the electors??

Youhave already abandoned real revolutionary propaganda among the masses. You
are no longer combating illusions about peaceful evolution and those who are
spreading these illusions—the Cadets. All you are concerned about is the
Black-Hundred danger. But your “subtle manoeuvres” of joint election
lists with the Cadets are built on sand. You are impoverishing the real content
of revolutionary Social-Democratic work among the masses, but the gains from
this political trickery will not accrue to you, perhaps not even to the
Cadets—perhaps not even to the Peaceful Renovators, but to the Octobrists!
You reply to the falsification of the Duma by falsifying revolutionary
Social-Democratic tactics—but in this way you will neither improve the
Duma, nor strengthen socialism, nor advance the cause of revolution.

Unprincipledpractical politics are the most unpractical politics.

Theworking class must reply to the falsification of the Duma not by relaxing
but by intensifying its revolutionary agitation, by dissociating itself in its
election campaign from these wretched traitors, the Cadets.

Notes

[3]
This refers to the interpretations of Law of December 11(24),
1905 on elections to the State Duma published by the Governing Senate prior to
the elections to the Second Duma. These Senate interpretations supplementing
the law took away electoral rights from further groups of workers, peasants and
representatives of the non-Russian nationalities. V. I. Lenin called them
“excellent Stolypin interpretations of the ’essence of the
constitution’\thinspace".

[4]
This refers to the instruction of the Ministry of the
Interior published on December 12 (25), 1906, according to which urban and
Zemstvo authorities were to issue election forms “only to managers or
boards of those societies and unions pursuing political aims, and their
branches, which are entered on the register”, i. e., legalised by the
government. Thus, under the new interpretation only the Black-Hundred parties
were to receive election forms.

[5]Balalaikin—a character in
M. Y. Saltykov-Shcherdin’s A Modern Idyll, a liberal windbag,
adventurist and liar.

[6]
The words “in conformity with infamy” are taken
from the story The Liberal by the Russian satirist
M. Y. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

[7]
This refers to the deputies of the Frankfort Parliament,
the National Assembly, convened in Germany in May 1848 after the March
revolution. The majority of them were members of the liberal bourgeoisie who
engaged in fruitless talk about a draft constitution while in fact leaving
power in the hands of the king.

Nationalliberals—a political party in Germany which separated
from the party of Prussian progressists in 1866; it represented the interests of
the counter-revolutionary big industrial bourgeoisie.